Rather than leveling you need to adjust the grade so it slopes away from the patio. It's a lot of work to do it correctly but only needs to be done one time. Start by stripping your sod around the patio and out to the edge of your property. Then have a guy come in with a grader to scrape the yard away from around the house/patio. Then replace rolled sod on the new grade. This will do a lot of good things for your property. Protect it from water seeping and pooling around your foundation. Prevents molds and pests from accumulating near the house in the moist environment. Makes your yard a whole lot prettier, your mower won't leave those tracks on your turf. This treatment can be expensive. You can rent a sod cutter and move you turf by yourselves. But unless you have a good friend who owns a grader that part could cost a couple thousand bucks.

Post pics of the entire yard, looking out from the patio as well as toward it from the far side. Are the neighbor's yards higher or lower, or is it all fairly flat? What kind of soil is that (under the sand you added)? I really never thought TX would be wet enough to need French drains!

Sorry to hear that, Amy. The hydrangea roots should not be "too deep". Many will be surface roots located in the top 4-6" and others may go down 1 foot or so (it just depends how old the shrub is). Sounds like the plant was stuck for a long time in the pot at the nursery. I have had the same trouble but not with a hydrangea; it was some other type of bush. When I extracted it from the ground, it looked bad all right. I have lots of clay here but when I dig the hole, I mix in 1/2 or more of compost (or manure), some expanded shale, bone meal and whatever is appropriate/suggested for soils in your area. The shrubs are then planted no higher than 1" above the surrounding soil. Next time you plant another hydrangea, I suggested amending a lot with compost because of all the things out there, compost is near the top in terms of absorbing water and slowly releasing it. What I would evaluate is (a) how come you found areas where the soil was wet? what caused that? can it be prevented/corrected? (b) make a habit of cutting the roots of all newly planted shrubs to break the circling tendency that they develop in pots. I cut vertical lines about every 2". Do not let this get you down. Evaluate what went wrong, learn what works for you and try again. You do not even have to try with a hydrangea next. Mums are out for sale so check them out! Ha! Good luck! Luis

Or MAYBE install shallow swales on each side of main sidewalk. 1) Use a string level to make sure you have a positive grade from one end of main walk to the other, and can outlet water at low end with no problems. 2) Grade ground to slope sides gently to bottom of swale, especially making sure side next to main sidewalk slopes gently away from sidewalk for two to three feet. 3) For the short walks coming from the units perpendicular to the main walk, you'll need to bore under them and install 3 small diameter PVC pipes in series under each. These pipes should be about 10' long. 4) Slope ground away from perpendicular walks about 3 to 4 on each side to inlet and outlets of the pipes you just installed (to keep folks from stepping into a drop off if they happened to step off the walk. Also looks better). 5) Add gravel to discharge end of pipes to prevent erosion. Could also add larger rock to inlet ends to help prevent clogging. 6) Grass the swales, or create rain gardens with appropriate plants for function, beauty and to treat runoff. This should stop ponding in low areas unless there's an area of the walk itself that's depressed. If so, that section should be removed and relaid. NOTE: in large storms swales may fill and top walkways temporarily, depending on number and diameter of pipes under perpendicular walk, width and depth of longitudinal swales, etc.